Gene Montesano

A label stitched to the fly of every pair of Lucky jeans says, "Lucky You"--an apropos slogan for Gene Montesano, the apparel industry veteran who runs Vernon-based Lucky Brand Dungarees. Thanks in part to his knack for gimmickry, Montesano is making strides in a business where such long-established giants as Levi Strauss are struggling.

A label stitched to the fly of every pair of Lucky jeans says, "Lucky You"--an apropos slogan for Gene Montesano, the apparel industry veteran who runs Vernon-based Lucky Brand Dungarees. Thanks in part to his knack for gimmickry, Montesano is making strides in a business where such long-established giants as Levi Strauss are struggling.

June 22, 1999 | LESLIE EARNEST, Leslie Earnest covers retail businesses for The Times. She can be reached at (714) 966-7832 and at leslie.earnest@latimes.com

Moving from surf power to green power, three Lucky Brand Dungarees stores will buy their electricity from a Tustin power company that gets energy from renewable sources. The clothing manufacturer and retailer has signed on with Commonwealth Energy Corp., which provides energy from geothermal sources. "We're excited about being able to play a small part in creating a cleaner sustainable energy future," Lucky Brand partner Gene Montesano said in a statement.

Lucky Brand Jeans is coming home again. Los Angeles private-equity firm Leonard Green & Partners has agreed to pay $225 million to acquire Lucky from New York fashion company Fifth & Pacific Cos. The acquisition means that Lucky, founded in Vernon in 1990 and moved last year to a 1940s Art Deco building in downtown Los Angeles, will be locally owned once again. Denim veterans and Lucky co-founders Gene Montesano and Barry Perlman used clever marketing - including the "Lucky You" label stitched into the fly - to create one of the country's most popular mid-level denim jeans.

Amber Scott is thanking more than her lucky stars this week. The 20-year-old Indiana woman, who received only minor injuries Tuesday after her car was apparently rear-ended into a moving freight train and then dragged for four miles, credited some of her good fortune to the Lucky Brand Dungarees T-shirt she was wearing during her wild ride. In a story even stranger than fiction, the shirt, produced by Vernon-based Lucky Brand Dungarees, brandished the slogan "Too Tough to Die."

Baby boomer outfitter Liz Claiborne Inc. said Friday it is acquiring Vernon-based Lucky Brand Dungarees Inc., the sassy denim company that Claiborne hopes will extend the company's reach into the lucrative younger market. The latest acquisition, for an undisclosed price, comes on top of a two-year buying spree aimed at broadening the company's offerings into every major age category.

FOR a wine and food mecca, Santa Barbara is usually pretty quiet on the restaurant news front. But as summer winds down, the scene has had plenty to buzz about. To begin with, Restaurant Marcella in Los Olivos is ready for its close-up. Although the look of the room is pretty much the same as when it was a branch of the Wine Cask, changes in the menu are apparent now that a new chef is on board. And some new wine-friendly special offers signal a fresh start.

Our waiter begins: "Tonight we have flatiron steak, a piece that comes from the very end of the New York strip. The name comes from its shape. It's something like a horizontal New York." The setting is Lucky's, a steakhouse in Montecito that opened five months ago. The waiter, wearing a long white apron, has none of the rawness of L.A. waiters, who intend to be in the business only as long as it takes to sell a film script or get a comedy routine together.

When Gerard Santana was a bass player in an English rock band called Zodiac Mindwarp, he used to shop at British designer Lloyd Johnson's signature men's store on London's Kings Road in search of iridescent silk suits and ruffled "Vegas" shirts that would give him a mod look all his own. Over the years, Santana became enthralled with Johnson's retro fashions, which have been sold to rockers such as Rod Stewart and the Rolling Stones under the La Rocka label.

Levi Strauss & Co. is consistently ranked as one of the nation's most admired employers, and it owns one of the world's most powerful brands. So why is the San Francisco-based company laying off 6,400 workers and closing 11 plants? Events leading up to Levi's gut-wrenching cutbacks illustrate what can happen when products fail to equal a brand image honed and kept alive in consumers' minds.